But it still does essentially the same thing.
Sure, the 31-year-old, South African-born Mr. Noah is a new face and voice. Likening Mr. Stewart to a comedic father, he joked: “Now it feels like the family has a new stepdad. And he’s black.” Assured, handsome and with a crisp delivery, Mr. Noah was a smoother presenter than Mr. Stewart, who made an art form of sputtering and exasperated facepalming.
But if Mr. Noah’s debut was largely successful, it was also because of the operating system — the show’s writing — running under the surface. That algorithm, capable of processing a day’s media inputs into a satirically argued package, is what makes “The Daily Show” “The Daily Show.” This first outing was about proving that he could run the software without crashing.
Remember, after all, that this is not the first time that a foreign-born replacement filled the anchor chair. In 2013, John Oliver took over while Mr. Stewart took a break to direct the film “Rosewater.” Mr. Oliver was a hit, but that was in part because the writing staff had established an institutional voice that could survive a change in hosts. It wasn’t until Mr. Oliver unveiled “Last Week Tonight” on HBO that he came to sound distinctively like himself.
If Mr. Noah plans to overhaul “The Daily Show,” we’ve yet to see it. His first episode was familiar in both structure and material. There was a bit on the creation of “Popemojis” to honor the pope’s United States visit (“for when you want to inject just the right amount of confusion into your late-night sexting”). There were segments on the departing House speaker, John A. Boehner, and the discovery of evidence of water on Mars.